SEA TRACON was on back-up power most of the day due the storms earlier that knocked out the commercial power. That back-up power quit (Out of fuel? We saw that happen after the east coast blackout some years back) and after their 30 minutes of battery power was used up, they were out of juice, so I suspect they're trying to set-up an ad-hoc TRACON at the center.

ALL views, opinions expressed are mine ONLY and are NOT representative of those shared by Southwest Airlines Co.

Breaking News- A complete power failure in the radar facility for Sea-Tac airport has resulted in a ground stop. Just a few planes are taking off at pilot discretion, and incoming planes are required to do a visual approach in coordination with the tower, one by one. All Seattle-bound flights nationwide that have yet to take off are on hold.

Governor Gregoire just declared a state of emergency for Washington.

If you have never designed an airplane part before, let the real designers do the work!

Quoting RoseFlyer (Reply 5):Breaking News- A complete power failure in the radar facility for Sea-Tac airport has resulted in a ground stop. Just a few planes are taking off at pilot discretion, and incoming planes are required to do a visual approach in coordination with the tower, one by one. All Seattle-bound flights nationwide that have yet to take off are on hold.

This from the FAA officially:

Quoting FAA: Due to EQUIPMENT/POWER OUTAGE, there is a Traffic Management Program in effect for traffic arriving Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Seattle, WA (SEA). This is causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 1 hour and 16 minutes. To see if you may be affected, select your departure airport and check "Delays by Destination".

BFI, PAE, BLI and YVR all look good as does PDX. Hopefully they can solve the power mess at SEA-TAC. The Pacific/Northwest is finally getting a true winter that they have long been overdue for. Looks as if El Nino is taking effect this year.

DELTA Air Lines; The Only Way To Fly from Salt Lake City; Let the Western Heritage always be with Delta!

Quoting Osiris30 (Reply 7):Pretty surprising really... you would think they would be able to get power into that facility...

Have you seen the news about how badly our power infrastructure was damaged? This is the worst power outage we've ever had around here. My power has been out for over 24 hours now. (We have a generator, which is how I'm able to get on A.net.)

That's all thanks to the shear that's induced by our little Spanish friend...

Quoting ScarletHarlot (Reply 15):Have you seen the news about how badly our power infrastructure was damaged?

Yes.. I can understand *how* it might have been that they failed.. I'm just surprised they didn't have something going BEFORE the power failed there... Not blaming anyone, just found it quite literally, surprising..

I don't care what you think of my opinion. It's my opinion, so have a nice day :)

Quoting AirframeAS (Reply 12):
Alot of people were wondering about El Nino...if it was coming or not for a quite awhile.

It has been expected now, and it did end up having an effect on the upper level winds over the Atlantic this past summer/fall which suppressed tropical cyclone development, or helped to contribute to their early demise.

Quoting ScarletHarlot (Reply 15):
Have you seen the news about how badly our power infrastructure was damaged? This is the worst power outage we've ever had around here. My power has been out for over 24 hours now. (We have a generator, which is how I'm able to get on A.net.)

My fiancee Denise tells me they have had lots of outages up on Vancouver Island (she lives in Nanaimo). When it goes that long it really starts to suck! The day after Christmas 3 years ago I lost power to my home here in SLC for 72 hours. No worry; UP&L gave me a $100.00 (USD) credit, and I didn't have to pay them for three months!

[Edited 2006-12-16 06:00:46]

DELTA Air Lines; The Only Way To Fly from Salt Lake City; Let the Western Heritage always be with Delta!

I'm beginning to think there are very few of us who have power up here. Sea-Tac sounds fairly normal now but from here it is sitting in a sea of black. And it's cold (for us.) Sure smells "seasonal" with a million fireplaces going.

My damn flight to SEA from RDM just got cancelled cause of weather/radar outages, stupid QX costomer service agent rookies dont have a clue what the hell is going on. dealy us for an hour and a half then just to cancel us. now i have to wait until tomorrow morning to fly to SEA, then i have less then 40 minutes to make my connection to EWR. so if my flight to SEA is delayed at all, im screwed

Quoting AirframeAS (Reply 20):My parents still are without power...luckly they have a generator. I hope, when I fly home next Saturday (23rd) that things will be calm.... Oh, wait, I shouldnt jinx it....

Don't jinx me! I fly SLC-YVR also on the 23rd! I then have just a 2.5 hour window to get through customs, get to the rental car counter and get to the BC Ferries dock/terminal down the road at Tsawwassen. Then it's a two hour ride across the straits to Nanaimo/Duke Point. Even the smallest mess up and I'm screwed

I'm one of the lucky few with power in the Seattle suburbs. My neighborhood is on an isolated hill in Renton, and for some reason we never lost power. I watched transformers explode and neighborhoods go dark all over the area during the height of the storm, and most of those areas are still dark tonight. I have a view of all arrivals and departures from SEA (albeit a distant view), and even when winds were gusting to close to 70 mph during the storm, planes were still landing. Good thing they were landing directly into the wind!

I noticed on the way down 405 and up 520 that you could totally tell who still was without power by the amount of smoke hanging over the neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, I have also noticed my asthma having some difficulty with the smoke.

Quoting ScarletHarlot (Reply 15):Have you seen the news about how badly our power infrastructure was damaged? This is the worst power outage we've ever had around here. My power has been out for over 24 hours now. (We have a generator, which is how I'm able to get on A.net.)

Just got my power back at 11:00AM. What a nightmare. I wonder how the ride felt Thursday night? I went over I-90 at 11:00PM on Thursday during the rough part of the storm, and waves were whipping over the bridge while driving. I will NEVER do that again during a storm.

I noticed on the way down 405 and up 520 that you could totally tell who still was without power by the amount of smoke hanging over the neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, I have also noticed my asthma having some difficulty with the smoke. Sad

I took a drive down to Renton today and noticed the exact same thing. I live in downtown Redmond at the end of 520 and got my power back at 1AM Saturday (after 27 hours), but most of the rest of the eastside (including most of Bellevue except for downtown and pretty much everything from Redmond south to Renton) seemed to still be dark. The smoke is definitely eerie and in fact I was feeling pretty lightheaded by the time I was done shopping in Renton... thankfully the air is much clearer in Redmond.

I'm flying out of SEA on Monday night, so hopefully ops are normal by then. I don't see any reason they wouldn't be - this area is still a royal mess but a Monday night flight (my first on AA, no less - suddenly they're an option now that I live in an area that they serve) should give the airport folks plenty of time to plan for the operational difficulties the storm has created.

Frankly, the biggest oservation I came away with from this storm was that if we ever have a real disaster (read: earhquake or volcano eruption) this area is totally and completely screwed. I can't possibly imagine Virginia, where I'm from, reacting anywhere near this badly to a few days of power outage. Time to get some sort of protective device, a few pallets of food from Costco and a ham radio license in anticipation of people being totally incompetent at disaster readiness in the future...

Quoting Bcbhokie (Reply 34):Time to get some sort of protective device, a few pallets of food from Costco and a ham radio license in anticipation of people being totally incompetent at disaster readiness in the future...

Don't forget a pallet of ammo for that protective device.. I keep about 2 week's worth of MREs around for just such an occasion.

Glad to hear things are starting to get back to normal. Whatever the original problem was at TRACON (that caused their back-up power to fail) appears to have been resolved, and/or they got their commercial power back, and there are no ATC traffic restrictions in place.

ALL views, opinions expressed are mine ONLY and are NOT representative of those shared by Southwest Airlines Co.

I am also lucky and with power. There are still around 100,000 people without power, including some who haven't had any since last Thursday. That would suck quite badly. Trees are down everywhere, and four people are dead. Pretty serious storm.

Hi all,
I was very lucky...we were without power for 10.5 hours (went out at 5pm, returned at 7pm, out at 1am at height of storm, got back at 930am on Friday).
Internet was not back until Saturday am after midnight. The 2 inches of rain we got in one hour between 6-7pm on Thursday before the windstorm did not help matters at all.

As for SEA, there have been multiple problems. Power was out in Concourse A, South Satellite, windows blown out in Concourse C. The power failed at the Tracon facility and the backup generator failed sometime after midnight on Friday. I haven't been too focused on the airport, I still have family (some elderly) without power and in the cold; in some cases we don't think they will have power for 6-10 days...although the power companies have done a fabulous job; at one point over 1 million homes were without power, we are now down to about 350,000 or so after 57 hours, not bad at all. Most of the roads have been cleared (I live in Bothell in Snohomish County), so things here are pretty good, although for awhile things were a mess as we were the only area to have power on the eastside of the lake and at 8am on Friday, there were lines of people trying to get gas at the one gas station that had power and it got pretty ugly.

I am on one of the CERT teams (Community Emergency Response Teams) and we have been checking on our neighbors and they are in pretty good shape here...we are exceptionally lucky; it is a LOT worse elsewhere.

I have been checking into the situation at the airport and there does not seem to be any situation regarding delays at the moment; here it is sunny and no wind, so unless there is a power problem that has cropped up at the airport, it should be operating relatively normally..although I will stress that the airport was down to 24 departures/arrivals per hour when the tracon staff moved to the Auburn ATCC and into the tower at Sea-Tac to restore tracon services. I don't think that things have improved significantly since then.

Best thing to do is:
a) if in the Seattle area
1) CALL the airline to see if your flight is operating normally.
2) If you have power and internet access, use the internet...usually the flight information is pulled right off their mainframes and immediately updated. You may have a wait trying to get through to reservations.
3) If you have a flight interruption, determine if your airline is still considering this a weather related event. THIS IS IMPORTANT...the protection rules are different if a weather event (power at the airport is considered a weather event because it is beyond the airline's control).
4) If your flight is operating, even late, arrive three hours before the SCHEDULED departure time of your flight. If you arrive after the scheduled departure time, you may (stress MAY) be considered a no show.
5) Be patient. Get a coffee and be prepared to stand in lines for a long time...bring a tripod folding chair if you need to sit in the line (I carry one in my onboard bag and pull it out if I am going to be in line more than 10 minutes because of my back problems...it has saved my life more than once).

b) IF NOT in the Seattle area.
1) DO NOT CALL THE AIRLINE, use the internet to determine your flight status. It will be jammed with people who are trying to get in and out of Seattle.
2) 2-5 above will apply to you as well.

If you have a travel agent and they have 24 hour service capability, call them; they will be able to help you out better than the airline can directly.

It is still a mess here in the Seattle area, but it is improving by the hour. It is a testament to our preparedness and the graciousness of the people of this area...neighbors have been helping neighbors and strangers have been helping strangers. It's great to know that when things go south (and they have here twice in the last three weeks...remember the snow event??), people are ready to help. As are we all.

Quoting BAW716 (Reply 37):although I will stress that the airport was down to 24 departures/arrivals per hour when the tracon staff moved to the Auburn ATCC and into the tower at Sea-Tac to restore tracon services. I don't think that things have improved significantly since then.

There's nothing about SEA TRACON listed on ATCSCC's OIS page, so I'd take that to mean that they have their commercial power back and/or have their generator working OK. If TRACON was at any kind of reduced arrival rate, it'd be mentioned on this page.

Thank you! One of my friends is involved with CERT too and was active when the flooding occurred...now she has hurt her back so I am not sure she's done anything for this episode.

One of my neighbours has a tree through her house. She lives alone. I heard the tree come down and sent Mr. Harlot out to investigate...I stayed inside trying to keep our cats calm. He didn't see the tree down at first, but another neighbour went over and helped her...and then we went over and another neighbour too. It was good to see everybody helping her out. Thank goodness she was not in her bedroom at the time the tree came down.

I live in Bellevue, and haven't had power back yet!! Power went out around midnight on thursday and I am still waiting to have it restored It has been pretty chilly last night, was lucky to spend the night at a friend's place who got back power on sat evening.